Chapter 12. Chain letters
Aretha Franklin was right when she sang the song “Chain of Fools,” because anyone who gets involved with a chain letter is a fool. Like many scams, chain letters have been around for a long time. People have been losing money to chain letters since 1888. The scam is tweaked now and then to look a bit different or even to make it appear legal, but the bottom line is that a chain letter is not a love letter, and it is never legal.
At its essence, a chain letter involves a letter that you receive containing a list of people, commonly five. You are asked to send a certain sum of money to the first person on the list, take her name off of the list, add your name as the last numbered person on the list, and send the list to ...
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